 Welcome everyone, welcome everyone on a beautiful, beautiful Vermont Spring Day. Aren't we lucky to live here? I have two announcements. One, please turn off your cell phone. And second, according to Triple E's bylaws, I need to inform you that in April 26th, there will be a meeting of the members. Usually we don't get very many people. And it starts at one and the lecture starts at two. Members have the ability to vote for officers and to discuss with the board any problems, concerns, accolades they want to pass on to us. It is our time for the board to tell you what's been going on at our board meetings, what our hopes are for the future. And it gets very discouraging if not very many show up. I am going to announce this for the next four weeks and I'm going to urge you. I can't pay you, but I will urge you to come to the annual meeting. And one of the things you can do by showing up is to show us that you appreciate what we do. Thank you. And now Beth will introduce the speaker. I'm very pleased to welcome Bridget Butler here today, a.k.a. the bird diva. She has been working in conservation and environmental education in New England for over 20 years, including with the Audubon Society. And now she travels the state of Vermont doing presentations and leading bird walks and doing TV and radio interviews and surveying birds for landowners. And today she is here to tell us about the owls of Vermont. So this was a pleasure. I welcome Bridget Butler. Thank you. Awesome. All right. Well, I want to thank all of you to start off for coming out and being here today. Because sometimes, you know, driving can be a little bit sketchy. But I see that the power of birds was just much greater than the weather today. So thank you for joining me today. And I'm really happy to be able to come and share my love and passion for birds with all of you. So today what we're going to talk a little bit about are the owls of Vermont. I want to ask you guys to start off with how many of you have seen an owl this winter? Yeah, raise your hands really high. Okay, super. And so one of the questions, and we're going to get this question out of the way right to begin with, one of the questions that has been kind of popping up all over the places, why were people seeing so many owls this year? And it was mainly barred owls. And a number of different scientists started to look at what was the cause behind this. And one of the things that tends to happen during this time of year, especially this year, is we get a lot of snow, right? And we got a lot of ice this year. And that made it really hard on hunting for owls. A couple of that with the fact that last year there was a higher population of rodents available. That meant that all of those nestlings from last year had a much greater success rate. They all had full bellies, so many more of them survived. So we had a lot of young first year owls this year. And so there were more of them. And there were less mice, so that boom and bust of the kind of rise and fall. So all these young owls, and of course the young owls don't do too well against the mature owls. The mature owls are able to push them off of the prime habitat. And these younger owls end up, you know, well, coming to our backyard to hunt. And so it was nice for us to be able to see some of those birds. It was a stressful winter for them. But just like those natural cycles up and down, mother nature will take care of all of that. So it balances back out until that next boom and bust. So I'm happy that all of you got a chance maybe to see an owl this year. And I'll tell you a story about how I didn't later in the show. So tonight, today, this afternoon, all of the owls that you're going to see are owl photos, for the most part, that come from photographers from all over the state. For those of you who know me, I am not a photographer. I'm just the person that watches the birds. And so I'm always looking for great photos, like this one from Tyler Paquette. This is from down in Addison County, probably two years ago. Anybody know this species of owl? Snowy owl, yeah, great. How many of you have seen a snowy owl before? Wow, that's awesome. Okay, good. We didn't have as many of them this year, but Tyler got this great photo. And so at the end of the slideshow, there's a list of different people that took photos for the slideshow. So if you run into them at any time or are friends with them, please thank them very much because they kindly donated their photos for my presentation. Oh, okay, yes. I wish I could record the action of the sound that people make every time I put this slide up. Oh. Okay, so now I'm going to tell you how big this owl really is. This is the northern saw-wet owl. It's the smallest owl that we have in the state. If you think about a can of soda pop, that's about how big this owl is. It's a very, very tiny owl. And so some of our owls actually stick around during the winter or show up here during the winter and we're going to kind of talk about each of those different kinds. This one actually has to leave. If you think about this winter trying to find a rodent when you're the size of a can of soda pop through the ice and snow while dodging the bigger owls that are also looking for rodents, you don't want to stick around. So this tiny owl, northern saw-wet owl, they are partially migratory, so they're going to move out of this area. They like coniferous forests. So if you look down in the lower right corner of each slide, you're going to see little icons that kind of tell you a little bit more information about the habitat and the nesting. So these guys like to nest in cavities of dead trees and they'll also come to nest boxes. So we'll also be talking a little bit about what you can do for owls to keep them on the landscape and keep them happy and continuing to make more owls, which is the other thing that's happening during this time of year, is most of our owls are either on eggs right now or about to be on eggs. And that's why wintertime is such a great time to go out and look for and listen for owls as well. So with this little owl, Vermont is like in the heart, the core of its breeding range. They do leave, but they're starting to come back now. We actually had a couple of reports just this week of saw-wets being seen in different places. So March and April are for courtship, and then they're going to be a little bit quiet as they nest, and the hatchlings are going to come out, oh, let's say around May and June, and then be raised through the summertime. So what's really cool about this owl is that I've got this great picture. Oop, we're going to do the sound first, not the next picture, sorry. Alright, so vocalizations. So I said that March and April are for courtship. So one of the ways these little guys are able to connect with one another is through their voice. And that's probably one of the best things about owls is all the different voices. And I'm going to get all of you to call like owls today. So be prepared, leave now if that's uncomfortable for you. But we are going to be hooting in just a minute. So this little owl has a call that it uses to be able to attract a mate and to set up a territory. And what's great is it sounds like a truck backing up. So it just does that boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, which you guys can do, right? This is the easy one, we're going to start with the easy one. Ready? Boop, boop, perfect, perfect. So don't go out right now and do that outdoors. Well, maybe you should because maybe a little owl owl will come and visit you. This is what it really sounds like. That's not what I meant to do. Sorry, I am juggling a microphone and a clicker. I'm not doing a good job. There you go. Intense, right? But if you think about needing to be able to communicate through a kind of forest that holds its needles all year, you need to be able to have a pitch and a volume that it's going to carry. So these guys hunt from really low perches and they will actually cache their food during the winter time so that they can have it later on when the babies are born. Now, of course, if you're going to call that loudly, you have to be able to hear back. And I think that's one of the questions I get a lot is like, where are the ears? And for some owls, you'll see those little tufts of feathers. Those aren't actually the ears. We'll talk about those later. But the ears are kind of on either side of the owl's head. If we think about the facial disc that we saw with this little owl, right? That kind of circular dinner plate kind of shape around either of the eyes. It's actually kind of like a catch basin for sound. It's shaped almost like a parabolic microphone would be shaped in order to funnel the sound out toward the ears. And the ears are on either side of the head and they don't have like an external ear like we do. It's just like a hole there. So the feathers do the job of pushing that sound toward the hole. And the other crazy thing is that they're asymmetrical, which means one ear is higher than the other. And that way, the owl can triangulate when it's hunting. So it's listening for mice and moles and voles and things under the leaf litter, under like much shallower snow than what we have now. And they will cock their head back and forth in order to be able to hone in on where that mammal prey is. So it's really kind of cool to have one ear up higher than the other. Alright, Northern Sawat, tiniest owl that we have in Vermont. And these guys, we can actually help them by having nest boxes for them. So Audubon and Cornell Lab of Born Nathology, if you look online, they have a number of different nest box patterns that you can build for them. The other thing that you can do as a landowner, how many of you own wooded forest land somewhere? Or maybe have woods in your backyard, right? So one of the things that we can do is we can leave dead trees that are going to be safe on our property in order for the owls to have a place to nest. And to actually, these little guys, like this next one, take cover from some of the larger owls. So this one, this one is just a little bit bigger, not by much. You can barely see it here because it's got that camouflage thing going on, right? So they've got this cryptic coloration that helps them blend in with their surroundings. This is Eastern Screech Owl. This one is in its gray phase. And so there's actually two phases to this owl, which you'll see in a minute. And the gray phase is the more common owl that we have here in Vermont because, well, it kind of blends in a little bit better during the winter time. This one sticks around, whereas the other one does not. This one, for some reason, is able to push into different areas, mainly in the Champlain Valley where there's a little bit less snow cover some years and still be able to find food. So again, these guys, very similar to Northern Sawat, like coniferous woodlands, they will nest in dead tree cavities. So that means we can also provide them with nesting boxes as well to keep them on the landscape. So these guys nest in April and May. May and June, we're going to see the young and then they will fledge in June and July and probably stick with the parents for a little bit to be fed. We're at the northeastern edge of this bird's range. And so it's likely, as climate change kind of, well, advances, that this bird will stay here for quite some time. Other birds, we're on the southern end of their range and we may see them disappear from our landscape. So this little one, there's the gray phase and the red phase. So if you think about it, in Vermont, many of our trees have more of a gray bark tone to them than they do the red bark tone. And what's really interesting when I start to think about climate change is one of the climate adaptive species of trees is actually red oak, which does have a little bit more of a red tinge to the bark. So it'll be interesting to see if we see more red morph phases as we advance through time. That would be an interesting study. So eastern screech owls, these guys are one of the first owls that we're going to talk about with these little ear tufts. So if they're not really ears, what are they? Anybody got a guess? What they're for? Recognition of each other? It's a little bit more about blending in again. So if you think about trying to make yourself blend in on the end of a dead tree stump, right? Is it nice and smooth and round? No, it's like fragmented, right? The sticks that break off of trees too, right? You'll see this a little bit later with one of our other species that has these little ear tufts as well. Also, you will be able to tell the mood of the owl a lot like our dogs, right? Where the tail goes up or the tail goes down. If the owl is very agitated, those ear tufts will flatten out a little bit, okay? If they're in conflict with one another. So sometimes we can read body language from birds as well, and luckily those ear tufts can give us a little bit more information. Here's what these guys sound like. This one's really hard to mimic. I know some people that are really good at some bird, some birders that are really good at gathering a lot of spit in the back of their throat and then whistling through it. Ew. I am not good at that, and I'm okay with that. So it's a descending kind of winny. And then they have a tremolo. Let's see if I have the tremolo as well. It's kind of like one note that just goes out. That one pulled out a little bit more. Nope. He's going to keep going. Anybody heard that one before? Ooh, good. Awesome. Seen it? Awesome. I have not. There. Ooh. Different tone, different pitch. Sometimes between males and females, and we'll hear that a little bit later with another species, the tone, the pitch is different. So you can actually, when you fine-tune your ear, you can hear the difference between male and female as well. These guys are doing all right in Vermont, and they're mostly concentrated in the, there. That's the one where you blow bubbles through your spit. So if I wanted to try to teach kids to do it, because they love that. So this one is mostly concentrated in the Champlain Valley in Vermont as well. All right. How about this one? So we've got a couple of different symbols across the bottom here now. Barn owl. So this one is gorgeous coloration, those beautiful little freckles across the chest, that tawny brown color. That heart-shaped facial disc as well. And it's really sad because that circle with the line through it means that we don't have them breeding here in Vermont. As Eastern Screech and the Northern Sawet, both of those owls breed here. This one does not. We haven't had records of this bird breeding in the state since 1983. And we haven't had a lot of sightings of them either, except for one of my friends, my new birding friends, Morgan Quimby. She's a budding photographer. She lives in the Jericho area, and she got a picture of one last year. And I was like, you need to send that to the Vermont Birds Record Committee, because that's a big deal. So much more needs to be studied about this bird. We're really at the northern edge of its range, so we used to have them more so in southern Vermont. We're just not seeing them as much anymore. At the same time, with climate change, this bird may come back into our landscape. So a lot more monitoring. They're declining also regionally as well, and in Vermont they are listed as special concern, so a little bit more attention. And at some point in time, possibly some more funding if we do find a breeding pair here in Vermont. The reason for their declines, that little grass symbol there, means that they like open grasslands and fields. So as we see grasslands and agricultural fields start to either convert due to development, or even just convert due to natural succession. So they go from an agricultural land to shrub-scrub. That means that it's less preferable for that type of owl that likes to hunt in those types of habitats. The other big one that impacted the population of this bird is vehicle collisions as well, and some of you may have even experienced that this year, and hopefully not the collision part, but like the almost part. So one of the things when these birds, we experience heavy snowfalls during the winter and ice, the birds get pushed to forest edges and actually roadways as well. If you think about it, that's an easy place to hunt. The shrubs have been pushed back, and that moment that that mouse or meadow owl darts across the road, it's open, it's wide open. And if there are car lights there too, maybe that makes it a little bit more visible, but it's also much more risky for them as well. So vehicle collisions have been a problem for this one. One of the things that we're starting to see is a resurgence in interest in grassland birds, especially in Vermont, like bobble links and meadow larks. And so as different organizations work with landowners and farmers to improve those types of grassland habitats for those birds, we may actually see some of the owls that depend on those grasslands during the wintertime months, especially start to come back. So this owl, if you've ever heard this owl, it will raise the hairs on the back of your neck. The only time I've ever heard this owl was when I was in Massachusetts and I was working for Mass Audubon and I was on an overnight there with staff. We were at an old farmstead, much like the Green Mountain Audubon Society here in Huntington. We were all sleeping out outside and we heard this. It's also like nails on a chalkboard kind of thing, but the owls find that attractive to each other. Or if you're another male owl, it's serious business that you should not be in the same territory because it's already taken. So if you hear that, please record it and get it to your nearest Audubon chapter because we'd like to know if we will be having these guys across Vermont once again at some point in time. All right. Oh, gosh, this bird. Jeez. So if you fall in love with barn owls, I think your heart will really feel for this owl. Gosh, this is my new owl crush, I think. So this owl is smaller than the larger owls, like barred and great-horned, and it's just much more delicate and spelt. This is the short-eared owl. These guys nest actually on the ground in grassland habitats and we're actually at the southernmost edge for this species. So this is really more of a northern species of bird. It's a rare migrant to the area and a casual resident, which means sometimes we have them here year-round, but most of the time they pop up here when the food sources up north aren't as great. These guys love meadow voles, and what's really cool about this bird is they hunt right at that time when it's like, it's dusk. Dusk is the best time to go out and look for this bird. And they are amazing because the flight pattern of this bird, you will not confuse it with any other bird. So if you're out open field with a woodland nearby because they like to roost, especially in swampy forest woodlands, and out of the woods, low-flying comes this butterfly-like owl with that gorgeous facial disk. And it's crazy because the body stays still and the wings do this gorgeous butterfly flap as they come cruising like just level over the ground surface in order to find food. They are intense. Those yellow eyes, absolutely beautiful. Question mark means that we don't know if they're breeding here or not. So it's possible that we have good habitat for them, but we're not sure whether or not we have a breeding population as of yet. Best spots to go for this bird. So if you go and look up on eBird, eBird is an online platform where birders upload their sightings of what they've seen and when they've seen it, and it generates a map. So you can actually go in and type in short-eared owl and type in Vermont, and it will show you all the places where people are seeing short-eared owls. The hotspot right now is Gage Road in Addison near the Dead Creek Wildlife Management Area. Now, I'm going to tell you, if you go right now, like today, well, maybe not today. I don't know whether it's not too bad. It might be good. But if you go between 430 and dark, you have a very, very good chance on Gage Road of seeing one of these birds come out of the woodlands there and hunt. In fact, multiple birds. So there have been, I think, between three and six individuals seen at any one time there. The other hotspot for these guys, although we haven't seen them show up yet, this year is up at the Mrs. Goy National Wildlife Refuge. We've passed the Visitor Center, and there's those gorgeous farm fields all along the left. And the Bog Swamp Area, Macquam Bog is there. They come out of the bog and across the field there. And my kids have the most killer life bird list ever, because it's all the really awesome, rare birds. So this was, like, the perfect kid adventure, right? Like, a bunch of snacks. 430 after school, we're going to go. We can get back in time for dinner. We pulled over on the side of the road and stood in the middle of the field, and these owls came out of the woodland and flew right over our heads. It was amazing. And they were all like, No, they were fine. They got into it after the second one came out. I was like, you guys, look, there's another one, and there were two flying over us. So last year we had really great sightings up at the Mrs. Goy National Wildlife Refuge and right now Dead Creek is a really great place to go for this bird. These guys are also in decline as well. They're very nomadic, which means that they will go where there's food available to them. And one of the big impacts on this bird is habitat fragmentation and conversion as well. So again, they need, like, a wooded area, nice wooded forest that's intact, and then they need grasslands to be able to hunt in as well. And so you need those two things next to each other. One of the things that's helped this bird is to be able to work with landowners, especially farmers, on a different mowing regime for some of the farm fields, and conversion to hay from row crops as well. So what you're growing can also keep these birds on the landscape a little bit more. Gorgeous, gorgeous bird. I hope I see one this year. So here's a shot of one from Dead Creek. You can see just a different body shape to them, too, in the way that they hold their bodies as well. Beautiful facial disc as well on this bird. This is what they sound like. They're screechy, too. I find that the owls that prefer to nest in the grassland areas have more of that screechy sound than the owls that are in the woodlands. So it's something about how the sound travels across those two different habitats. That's very important to the way that their vocalizations have evolved. All right, here's another one. Oh, gosh, I would love to see this one. This is another photo by Tyler Pockett. Tyler is this really awesome young birder. And a couple years ago, he did a How Many Birds Can I Take Photos of in one year. And he did it as a fundraiser so that he could raise money and send somebody to the Hog Island Audubon camp. And so if you ever see Tyler or you get a chance to meet him or cross paths with him online, tell him thank you for all of his work to kind of continue his passion for birds and pass it on to others. And sharing photos with me for sure. So this owl, same kind of habitat, preferences as that short-eared owl, they're really poorly known. We don't know a lot about them in Vermont. Again, we're at the southern edge of their breeding limit here. They are migrant and they migrate based on the prey that's available again. So if the prey item that they like, the meadow voles and other rodents kind of crash, then they may show up here. The cool thing about these guys is during the wintertime, they like to roost together. They like to hang out together, much like crows do in the wintertime. They probably more than one nearby. This is the time of year where if they were in Vermont, they're going to be leaving so that they can move further north and establish their breeding territory as well. And so these guys are most frequently reported in the Champlain Valley as well. And we're not sure if there's been a recent breeding pair or a breeding pair at all of this bird in Vermont, but we have had sightings of them. So this one, right? Same hunting habitat as the short-eared. But listen, Hootie, they actually like to build nest or use nests of other raptors in trees. So that's where they're going to be broadcasting their sound from is the woodland in order to establish territory and a mate. Hence the Hootie sound. All right. Who else do we have? So I love this photo. I don't know where it came from. If you Google Bart Owl, this photo pops up everywhere. And everybody's used it. And I don't think anybody attributes it to anyone, but somebody should get credit for it, I think, because it's pretty amazing. How many of you have seen a Bart Owl before? Yes. Okay, that's because it's the most common owl in Vermont. This is one of our larger owls. These guys like forest woodlands and wooded swamps. They really need dead trees. And trees also that would support maybe a red tail or a crow. So if you have a woodland or a bend near a woodland where there are nesting red tails and crows, during the wintertime you want to come back and look and see if there are Bart Owls nesting in that area, because sometimes bards will actually build on top of that previous platform from the bird and start their own nest. But they also like cavities, so you can put up Bart Owl boxes for them. So St. Mike's, I want to say, St. Mike's has a natural area now that they've just recently opened a little bit more to the public. And one of the professors there has started putting up Bart Owl boxes. So it would be really cool to see if they get more nesting owls there. I believe you put up a screech Owl box too and within like a week and a half there was a screech Owl in it. So really good stuff. And again, this is the time of year. These guys are going to be, let me just double check here, eggs. March, April. Hatch, April, May. Fledge, May and June. And the young are fed by the adults until late summer and early fall. So this owl has one of the largest repertoires of sounds of all of the owls. How many of you have heard the myth about bears hooting in the woods? Oh yeah, right? Don't get in an argument with a Vermonter about whether or not that's really a bear. I learned my lesson on that one. But unfortunately, when you talk to bear biologists, they tell you about the vocal cords and the range of bears. They just can't make that same sound. And whenever I have talked to someone who tells me the story of hearing a bear hooting in the woods, and I say, what does it sound like? The person says something like, who cooks, who cooks for you all? So they'll be like, who, who, who, who, who. And I'm like, yeah, Bart Owl. And they're like, no, it's a bear. So, and what's even more fascinating about that myth is it originates in Vermont. So it's kind of cool to kind of trace that kind of cultural story that's built up over time. I would love to work with the Folklife Center to kind of really dig into that and maybe do some interviews and figure out maybe where that story started from and how long ago. It's pretty cool. All right, so speaking of vocalizations, it's not a bear. It's going to be a Bart Owl. And what biologists do, people that study birds, is they put words to the patterns and the pauses for birds to kind of better describe them and be able to identify them later on. So that who cooks for you, who cooks for you all is the pattern and the set of words that most sounds like the tones of what the Bart Owl actually sounds like. So we're going to try to make those sounds. And we're just going to start with the words. But you have to make an owl face first. Can you make an owl face? Can you go, oh, and then we're going to go, who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all? It's a really good start, you guys. But we're not going to get any owls to come into us if we sound like that, right? But that's a great place to start. And what's really wonderful about Bart Owls is they're really super social and they'll call during the day and they'll call at night as well. And so if you hear a Bart Owl and you're able to respond back to it, they'll call back to you. And it is likely that it will fly in and check you out. So it is worth practicing. So I discovered this talent that I have for calling owls when I was canoeing with some friends one night with some libations. And I thought I was being cool and we were on this beautiful lake in New Hampshire and I started to call back to the owls and the owls called to me and the next thing you knew there were two or three different owls right near us along the lake shore it was really wonderful. And years ago, years later in my career, after libations in a canoe on the lake, I was working for the Audubon Society and I was leading an owl prowl and normally you use a tape recorder and well, back in the day you used a tape recorder, you probably use an iPod now. I had a tape recorder and I was out with 20 people and this was at Green Mountain Audubon and we had owls there and I'm playing the recorder and the next thing you know the battery dies and I'm like, no, I have to deliver I have to bring these people an owl and so I thought I'll give it a try and so I went and we waited and we waited and I was like oh god, please and in the distance we heard one call back and I was like yes and since then I've never led an owl prowl with any kind of audio I just use my own voice and it's become a great party trick as well during the winter and it does actually work so what's great is if you make the owl face and you can round out your mouth and make that sound and use your diaphragm they're suckers for even a halfway good barred owl call and they will come and check you out so these guys also do some other different calls mainly the calls are to attract a mate and to establish territory and it's also a way for them to stay in touch with each other across the wooded landscape so during this time of year you might also hear the catarwalling where it sounds like monkeys in the woods you're like yeah it's the owls again it's not the bears it's not monkeys it's the owls so they get going they're like and you're like what is going on and it's those guys they're all starting to talk back and forth to each other getting really riled up and excited there's a big party going out there with owls now leader on in the season as we get into June and July there's another sound that is worse than the barred owl sound and the first time I ever heard it I was in Moortown in the woodlands and I was out gardening late in the day it was during the summertime and dusk was coming and it's getting dark and I'm finishing up and I kept hearing this sound that went and I was like what is that and we were in a spot where there was continuous forest and it was right near the sugar bush area and all of that so I figured man it could just be anything and I went out thinking well maybe I'll call it in with an owl call who knows what it is maybe it's a bobcat I don't know and I went out and did the barred owl call a number of times and I had three see up see up come in close to me and I thought oh my gosh I'm either going to get torn to bits or this is going to be really cool and it was really cool and then I felt really bad because it was three fledgling barred owls that were doing their begging call for food and I had nothing sorry compost pile is over there go so this huge range of vocalizations is really really amazing with barred owls from the territory and courtship calls to the social calls that they have between each other to the begging calls of the young and it's something that we can kind of hear throughout the seasons kind of starting back in February and all the way through the summertime one of the best resources to kind of study up on owl sounds is through the Cornell lab of ornithology they actually have an owls of North America CD set and I think the barred owl alone is one CD there's just so much there it's really amazing if you get really good you can distinguish the difference between male and female female has a little bit of a tremolo of a vibrato on the owl so it kind of has a little vibrato on the end so make sure if you're calling back you call as the right opposite to what you're hearing otherwise it'll really get intense and you don't want that so let's listen to the real thing this is another gorgeous shot from Bob Salter he's from up in Highgate another great bird photographer who hooked me up with some photos you just want to run out in the woods and start that's a female you hear that little vibrato on the end there just that little bit of brrr on the end it was a nice female how many of you guys have heard that? oh good now let's try to make the call together so we're going to get that owl face going ooh back in the back of the throat support it with your diaphragm and we'll do that who cooks for you who cooks for you all but make it hoody are you ready? one two three ooh nice when you make yourself a little bit different that's more attractive to a mate just be careful be careful awesome alright so here's my story I was telling you about this year everybody sent me pictures I got a bar down in my backyard it's sitting on my feet or it landed on my face I have not seen one yet how come everybody else is getting to see bar dowels getting to see one and I live in St. Albans city so I'm within the city limits but I do have a nice woodland area thanks to all of my neighbors behind us and we have this beautiful little brook that comes through so we have this little kind of maybe two acre snippet of of wildness there and so one morning as I'm feeling sorry for myself and I'm you know walking back from the bus stop I go to fill up the bird feeders this was literally I think it was last week and this is a print from a bar dowel in the snow in my backyard and these shadows right here are from my kids climbing structure so then I was trying to figure out did it sit on the climbing structure and then like drop down to get something so this is our yard stick here so you can see the length of the width of the wingspan these outer feather edges look at that you get the primaries right in there all the little digits of the feathers on the outside here's the tail right here this is where the tail dragged I don't know if this was the edge of the tail as it came in and had to bank hard to hit this spot here so this is where the talons went in there's actually a set of three little indentations it's possible that the bird kind of hopped kind of came out of that and we got all of the talons imprinted in the snow and this is where the face was when it came in for the landing to hit whatever this prey item is and it's most likely that hopefully it got it with its talons rather than its face because the snow was very deep there it was over six inches deep and a whole layer of ice underneath so I was like this is great I didn't get to see it but I know they're here and they're here in the city within the city limits it's so awesome very seemingly adaptable species which is great so these guys are doing alright across the landscape we can still help them out kind of lengthening timber harvest time maintaining kind of an aged forest structure because they really do like older trees so it's amazing in that little two acre plot in our backyard we have some very very old large trees very big around and lots of snags because we've watched woodpeckers and sap suckers and chickadees go in and out of a number of nests there in the woodlands yes anybody ever seen one of these before yeah good alright question yes no so the tracks and what's great now that everything is started to melt is you can see where the prey were so they were all tunneling underneath the snow so white-footed mice and voles and moles are still active during the winter time we have another species of mouse that does hibernate but white-footed and moles and moles and voles stay active and so those are all the little tunnels that as the snow melts watch because you'll see those little tunnels going through the snow they're only about like that big around and so these owls that amazing sense of hearing those facial discs they can hear the rodents moving underneath the snow and that's what they're keying in on and so they'll often sit and you get this whole head tilt thing that they're doing as they're waiting and watching and then they drop in for the kill which is why this winter was so very hard for them ice lots of snow ice again probably very hard on a lot of those here's a good word for you subnivian the subnivian zone throw that down at the dinner table tonight people will be like whoa so that means animals that live underneath in that snow layer and when we do get a lot of snow it's actually warmer deeper down underneath the snow one of the activities we used to do at the Audubon Society with little kids is we would give them little film canisters of Jell-O that hadn't been gelatinized yet so we'd mix up the Jell-O everybody gets a film canister and now we're going to go outside you put it somewhere where you think it's going to be the warmest it can be and then we'd go inside and read stories and do a puppet show and everything and then we would come back outside and everybody would find their little container and pop it open and we'd blop it out and see who's stayed all liquidy and the kids that buried them deep in the snow those were the ones that were most likely to stay more liquid much warmer once we get a nice dense layer of snow that's why all those guys can do alright underneath there awesome subnivian this guy is going to bust through anybody's subnivian zone and eat them this guy will also eat many of those smaller owls including the barred owl if it can so if you take two two liter bottles of soda or seltzer and you stack them one on top of another that's about how big this owl is so this is a great horned owl it's our largest nesting breeding owl that we have it has bright yellow eyes and ear tufts and that so that it blends in I look at all this dead wood in here and if we were looking at this bird from a distance those little ear tufts are going to blend in and look just like the sticks and the debris that are around that bird so whereas the barred owl doesn't like forest fragmentation these guys are actually alright with it so they're a little bit more adaptable they don't mind like a messy kind of up and down forest mosaic so they are very tolerant of habitat changes here in Vermont they will nest in a number of different types of places that's why there's so many little icons across the bottom so they'll use very blue heron nests they'll use red-tailed hawk nests they'll nest in cavities that are in live trees they'll nest in cavities that are in dead trees they'll do platforms they'll go into buildings or little overhangs or underhangs under things as well so they are our second most common owl in Vermont and they're mainly in the Champlain Valley so these guys also have a really cool vocal repertoire not as extensive as barred owl and it's much deeper so you have to drop down into your lower register if you're going to do this one so this one does who's awake me too so but we're gonna make it better than that and they will respond I was really surprised when I was teaching up at Hog Island off the coast of Maine for Maine Audubon and I was out on the island before everybody else arrived for the summertime the great horned owls were calling out there and I thought you know I've called in a couple barred owls before I might as well try a great horned owl and so I dropped into a lower register and I had two great horned owls fly in above me like that and I was like there's no one here to see this with me I'm all alone on an island but it was very very cool so this is another one that if you learn how to mimic it you can get it to call back alright are you ready it's your turn who's awake me too alright and now we're gonna make it super hootie here we go go low as low as you can alright one two three okay that's like too staccato as an owl but we might fool them so these guys will not be in the same territory as the barred owl so if you have a barred owl don't call like a great horned owl they don't like to hang out near each other one eats the other one and they also compete for food so when we find great horned owls they tend to be in different forests than where there's established barred owls around and this one we don't have a lot of great we have some records of them but they are declining so we are starting to see declines through the breeding bird surveys and we're also seeing declines in them across the region and our Christmas bird count data also is showing declines now the tough thing with that is these guys are active at night so one of the hard things is getting people out at night to be able to figure out if those birds are actually around so if you practice and you go out you might be able to call one in and then get us that data that we need I have a friend who came and birded up in the Franklin County Christmas bird count this year and he's like another 20-something year old who can be out until 2 or 3 in the morning calling owls in the middle of nowhere and he found a great horned owl in the Franklin County this year so it's very exciting to have that data point alright here's what they sound like and the one that's responding is the male he's a little lower pitch he got interrupted heard this one before ooh good in the back couple people nice so kind of fun to start to train your ear to listen to those subtle differences and then know how I actually have a pair here in the area alright now we're gonna move into some special owls so all of those owls were the ones that we've documented here that have been breeding here or our casual residents that show up that we know are here on the landscape now we're gonna go into the owls that are like go out and see this owl if anybody tells you that it's around because they're awesome alright so we're gonna go back to tiny teeny tiny but not as tiny this is a northern saw-wet owl this one man is on my bucket list and I there are records of it in Franklin County there are records of it in Montgomery and Richford and there are there are community stories so nowadays we're so reliant on e-bird and being able to look up where people are seeing birds but there's people who don't even know that e-bird exists yet and so there are those stories that start in the community that people tell and then sometimes they get back around to me and then I gotta trace it back and see if I can get permission to go up and there's been a couple of stories that are coming out of the Richford area about this owl and I'm actually leading an owl prowl up in Richford tomorrow night so fingers crossed although it's more likely we'll get bards so this is another one of the smaller owls we are at the very just outside of the southern end of this bird's range this bird really is much further north in the boreal and montane forests much more common in Alaska and obviously Canada so they are small they have no ear tufts, they have yellow eyes and the big difference for this one hopefully we're not going to the sound right away yep so there's saw wet so the big difference in telling the saw wet and the boreal apart is you want to look at that facial disc and you want to look for the black line around the facial disc so that's the big so they're kind of darker more so throughout saw wets tend to have a reddish tone to them and the boreal owls have a much darker tone and that darker ring around the facial disc so these guys rely on mature dead trees for roosting and nesting and they're very sensitive to clear cutting so if we find out that we have those in the area a lot of work would be done to do outreach to landowners and figure out what's happening on that landscape that is there already that that bird likes and how do we keep that there or improve it I think I have the call for this one maybe I don't, I might not so the reason why I didn't do calls for these is because we're not likely to hear them but boreal owl I think the last report that was going through the community was probably about two years ago and then there have been historical records going back into the early 1900s for this bird but no records recently of them either being here or breeding here alright but then there's this one oh so this is the northern hawk owl when my husband and I first started dating like the true test was hey jump in the car we're going to drive three hours to go see this bird that's really rare you want to go he had a really good bird list too right away when we started dating and we're married now so he passed the test so northern hawk owls are an eruptive species so when I say eruptive that means that sometimes they push into the area in great numbers and other years they're not there at all and typically they have ebbs and flows with the prey availability like we were talking about with barred owls and some of the other ones so when there's a big boom in the population we're going to have a lot of owls that are born and then the next year tends to be a bust and the young birds have to get pushed out by the older, more mature birds so that's a great thing about this bird is some years when we can predict how the lemming population is going or the meadowville population is going we can say this is a year quickly to happen and because we have this in the data we can make some of those predictions so a couple years ago there was one in Waterbury years ago before that the one that I took my husband to see was in Eden these guys are called a hawk owl because when they fly and when they perch in their posture and in their flight pattern they resemble acipitors like a cooper's hawk or a sharpie or like a falcon in flight so they just fly very differently than most other owls they're very very quick and sharp in the way that they move and the way that they perch so these guys are crazy too because they're diurnal which is awesome so this is a bird you don't have to go out at night to see you can go out during the day and it'll be there and it'll be hunting they like to perch on little tiny branches on the tops of things and so when you get to the spot where people have been reporting one you just scan the tops of all the trees and boom there's that owl shape sitting up right or maybe it looks more hawk shape like and once you get your binoculars on it you do that happy dance because it's a new bird that's like really super cool so these guys daytime percher normally up in the boreal forest but they're going to get pushed down here they like to settle into a place for a long period of time so that was the other cool thing in Eden and Waterbury is once this owl was spotted you knew it was going to be there for a while so it was finding food it was doing well and so it stuck around and a lot of people got to see it there's actually little known about them because they're very difficult to be able to study on their breeding grounds and they have similar hunting habitats and are in competition although that's part of the reason why they fly during the day and not at night or dusk so they compete with boreal owls, long-eared owls short-eared owls and the showstopper that we're going to see at the end of the show here that I'm not going to give away it's the giant one look at this guy just checking you out see how that whole body shape that whole silhouette is not very owl like it's very tapered and that allows them to be able to fly a little bit differently and faster be a little bit quicker in their emotions hence that's why they have the name that they have they're so serious too he's got some eyebrow action going on there another great photo from Bob Salter alright I know everybody snowy owls okay they're awesome snowy owls are another one of those disruptive species so we look for that crash in the rodent population in the Arctic tundra these guys if you've seen some of the National Geographic shows of these guys they're hardcore I mean they nest on the ground and they have to fight off foxes and coyotes and wolves and all of that and other birds of prey and they're just totally exposed in a habitat that is brutal and bright all the time right so these guys don't fly at night because they don't even really know what that is based on where they're from so November and March are the peak times for these birds to erupt in our area and they're the heaviest owl around at four pounds so they have a lot of weight and strength behind them because of what they have to be able to survive the females have the dark coloring on them so this is a female the immature males also have a little bit more of a bib to them so the white will drop down on the chest so that you can tell the difference between an immature male and female and the immature male will also be white all through the back of the head so if you just get the back shot maybe you'll be able to tell if it's a male or female this one looks kind of happy I think and then the mature males gorgeous white here's another great shot from Tyler Paquette and they have that nice crisp white throughout with a little bit of the black detailing on the tips of some of the feathers these guys sound like seals when they call it's not attractive at all unless you're a snow owl show stopper this is the biggest owl so two feet tall five foot wingspan I'm five foot four five foot wingspan so these guys are extremely rare but they're another eruptive species and they do show up from time to time they've been seen in Burlington, Vermont in past years and like somebody's backyard Judy's going yes I think when I was back at Echo there were reports of one in the area the other place that they do tend to pop pop down into oddly places right around Montreal there's a lot of great habitat around Montreal that's really awesome for a lot of these different birds so nice birding excursion and weekend in Montreal would be great so a couple years ago this species showed up in New Hampshire and everybody was going to see it one of the things that you know you want to make sure is before you're like this is a great gray owl is make sure it's not a barred owl because size can be very deceiving when the bird is very far away from you so you really want to look for this little kind of mustache thing going on down here right so these little white patches on either side of the tip of the beak are distinctive for the great gray owl also I feel like the facial disc is just huge and flattened right it's just really really big and again these guys are a boreal species so they need to be adapted to where they live what's crazy is most of the body on this bird is fluff so it weighs less than the snowy owl even though it's bigger than the snowy owl so by body mass it's actually 15% smaller than even the great horned owl so big and fluffy and so you really don't have to worry when they get super friendly that it's going to be too heavy on your head so this actually happened in New Hampshire the last time great grays erupted into our region this owl and the birders were being really good about it they spread the word about ethics and not baiting the bird and trying to get it to come in closer and all of that and they were a good distance away but this bird being from the boreal region didn't really have a lot of interaction with the people and that was just another perch to sit on and hunt from and every time I see this photo I'm like oh I would so take a talent to the head the trip to the hospital for stitches and all of that to have an owl land on my head anybody here ever had an owl land on their head no doesn't count if you've been able to go to some of the banding stations for birds like sawwets it's another awesome photo by Tyler check this out look at the furry legs so they have feathers all the way down their legs because they need to be able to adapt to the weather that we're having how many of you heard about the the hawk that was in Maine this year the what was it great gray hawk I think that was the species showed up in Maine supposed to be down in like Texas South America in Maine as we moved through winter and unfortunately it didn't do very well it got frostbite and one day a number of birders found it on the ground they took it to a rehab center and unfortunately they weren't able to save the bird because the frostbite had set in so badly on its legs and you could see that from the way that that bird was designed no feathers along the legs to be able to protect it from the cold weather and we see that in a lot of these owls right down to the little teeny tiny screech owl they're designed to be able to survive where and how they do so here's how we can pay it forward for owls I hope today that if you didn't love owls before you came in here you are like now you're a lover of owls and for those of you who already loved owls that like you've just fallen in love all over again and while you're in that emotional state I want to tell you that there are things that you can do and things that we can do as individuals and as community members to make sure that these birds stay on the landscape and actually are able to adapt and shift and be resilient in the face of climate change moving forward so we have things like leaving standing dead wood where it's appropriate if it's dangerous of course take it down but if you can leave that big tree change your mindset from it being big ugly and dead to something to support a number of different species including owls nest boxes when you don't have that great project to do we want to get them up before February so that they have that spot if you do have an owl around minimize disturbance tell everybody else to owls are stressed during the wintertime we want to observe them from a distance binoculars scope something like that when controlling rodents up for traps rather than poison in your community if you're on your select board or conservation commission talk about decreasing habitat fragmentation and improving wildlife connectivity where you live so that we keep habitats connected and we keep these places where the birds need to roost nest and feed like the grasslands so we can also work with each other on that and providing ways to support farmers in delayed cutting regimes as well and individual reports are so important to understanding owls in Vermont and so what I try to do is get people if you don't want to use eBird or you don't want to report things online make friends with somebody who does and help us gather the data that we need so that we can learn a little bit more about how these birds are existing on the landscape here's our photographers Zach Coda, John Van Hosen, Tyler Pockett, Robert Salter and Joanne so all gave me photos for free so I thank them all so much for their beautiful work that they do and if you want to get in touch with me that is where I'm at my website is birddiva.com I've got tons of activities that are happening all over the state this year and if you would like to host a private walk on your own land with your friends we can do that as well so I thank you all for being here today and I want to take questions from you if you have any I think anyone who has questions can ask the questions and people that need to leave can leave and I have tons of questions myself there now it's on are there any snowy owls around? this year we haven't had as many sightings of snowy owls I think there was one on the Colchester Causeway so some years we have a really big pop and there's a lot of them that show up at all at once but pretty much any winter it's likely that you'll get like one or two this just wasn't one of the big winters for that bird and you had to go out the Causeway to get it microphones coming back unless you're feeling like you've got a power voice she's like there we go so she said the barred owl where does it come from and so the barred part comes from the barring that's on the chest the the coloration, the pattern on the chest is where that comes from yes you can ask a general bird no that's not allowed yes of course you can ask a general bird question so I've been down to Kings and Bay to see the bald eagle nest but with all the frozen water like what's the ducks so she asked there's an eagle down at Kings and Bay it's all frozen over and we know that the lake froze in its well you know except for where the fairy was moving through in a couple spots here but for the most part it froze right over this year so it made it really hard for a lot of those birds as well and pushed waterfowl into different areas so what eagles are doing is they're looking for where those pockets of water are where all the waterfowl congregate and they'll go and take out ducks ducks there they're also bullies they're lazy so they will go and beat up other birds for food so if you think about the seagulls so the other place that I like to go and look for bald eagles is where people are ice fishing because they throw the fish scraps on the on the ice the gulls will take off with them or the crows will and then the eagles will beat up the seagull or the crow to try to get the food from them so yeah that's what they're doing this time of year so when we have years where there's more open water both in the riverways and the lakes we tend to see the bald eagles a little and that's actually I shouldn't say that because they would disperse more it's the years like this where you can where you know where those pockets are that's where they all are I also like as stuff starts to ice out now you want to pay attention to where those spots are I live up in St. Albans and as the bay starts to thaw out and all the waterfowl move in to migrate that's where we go to find the eagles I've had five eagles in one spot on the bay up there before it's pretty cool are snow geese back? snow geese are starting to come back now they're not congregating on the return flight they don't tend to have the same stopover spots and be in the same numbers as we see them during spring migration I can't remember there are I think there's some reports there's been a couple of videos that have been going online I'm trying to see if I can remember in my head where but they are kind of centered up along the St. Lawrence Seaway so they're going to follow that back up so when we don't get them here you just have to start to think about where are those other spots and nowadays I like to go to the New York side of the lake during the spring or during the fall migration to see them rather down in Addison County especially up towards the northern end of the lake on the New York side and much larger numbers than they are down here thank you very very very very much you're welcome come up and ask questions if you have any other ones